Say What?

Maybe some of our leading mental-health advocates ought to have their heads examined. What else besides a delusional brain disorder could explain the decision by Tennessee’s branch of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill to honor Governor Don Sundquist at its convention last weekend?

It was Sundquist, after all, who in 1996 attempted to privatize mental-health care under TennCare Partners, a grossly underfunded, experimental program that slashed benefits to many mentally ill individuals and devastated mental-health providers throughout the state.

One mental-health center in Shelby County had to close and other providers had to drastically cut services and lay off workers because the two private behavioral-health organizations paid by the state to administer the program did not reimburse the providers adequately for services they rendered.

Over the last two years, mental-health advocates, many of them associated with AMI, bombarded the governor's office with proof that TennCare Partners was failing the mentally ill. They appealed to their state representatives, mental health officials, and the media.

But Sundquist did next to nothing – until heavy-handed criticism from the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration last year got his attention. Suddenly, fixing the TennCare Partners program became a priority. Since then, the state has increased funding to the program and promised to adopt provisions to ensure that the mentally ill get services and providers get paid.

Still, it’s too soon to see whether the changes will be enough to repair the system. AMI should have watched to see if the state succeeds in fixing TennCare Partners, and, if so, lauded Sundquist at its convention next year.

Enough, Already!

As the Northwest Airlines pilots’ strike nears the end of its second week, Memphians can be forgiven for getting a little angry at both sides in this bitter dispute. More than a few Labor Day weekends were fouled up by Northwest, and every passing day brings gut-wrenching stories of people unable to get to funerals, unable to get to the bedsides of sick relatives, unable to deal with a wide range of personal matters, all because air travel in and out of Memphis has become increasingly problematic.

For what are apparently cynically political reasons, President Clinton has refused to intervene in the Northwest strike as he did when American Airlines’ pilots walked off the job two years ago. So we in Memphis are left standing on the sidelines, watching in amazement as both sides perform their little death dances, determined, it seems, to throw the baby out with the bath water, unconcerned with the long-term future of the airline whose welfare is supposedly their concern.

Since there’s not a whole lot we can do but watch, we only ask one favor of both sides in this suicidal dispute: spare us any more advertising about the virtues of your respective positions. We know by now that both management and the pilots have “suffered” mightily; trouble is, the Memphis public is now doing most of the real suffering. A plague on both your houses.